Deradoorian Becomes the Latest Artist to Leave Spotify

Numerous indie artists can’t seem to leave Spotify fast enough, and Deradoorian is now the latest to pull her catalog from the streaming platform.

Add former Dirty Projectors member Deradoorian to the list of independent artists scrambling to pull their work from streaming juggernaut Spotify. On the heels of the company’s founder and CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in AI military startup Helsing, numerous indie artists have been removing their music from the streaming platform. The list includes King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Young Widows, Hotline TNT, WU LYF, Massive Attack, and more.

Angel Deradoorian, known mononymously as Deradoorian, released her latest album Ready for Heaven earlier this year. She released a statement on Instagram explaining her decision to remove her catalog from Spotify.

“If there is a time where it feels safe and fair to re-upload them, I will,” she said. “You can stream my albums on all other DSPs, including Bandcamp. And it is always appreciated if you can afford to buy them.”

Among the reasons cited for her decision, Deradoorian mentioned “all of these videos [popping] up about Spotify forcing us to agree for them to utilize our music in myriad ways without us consenting.”

A Spotify rep was quick to issue a statement about “misinformation” online about changes to the Spotify for Artists’ terms of use.

“These claims are false. There have been no recent updates to our Spotify for Artists terms, nor do these terms govern artists’ music rights,” said a Spotify representative. “To be clear: Any claims that Spotify can do ‘whatever it wants’ to your music are simply untrue.”

But concerns surrounding what platforms might be doing with an artist’s work behind the scenes have mounted. That’s been even more apparent since creators on YouTube found AI modifications had been made to some of their videos on the platform without their knowledge or consent.

A statement from YouTube Head of Editorial and Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie attempted to downplay the nature of those changes: “We’re running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos during processing,” said Ritchie.

No matter how you slice it, artists are concerned about the impact AI is having on their work and their livelihoods on all sides. From artists leaving Spotify over AI-related investments to those protesting AI companies’ scraping data to train their algorithms without permission, the landscape for creatives is rapidly shifting.